For the love of money is the root of all evil

Obama, Iran, the JPOA, and Federalist Paper #75 (“The Treaty-Making Power of the Executive”)–Patrick Byrne

“I am not going to opine on the particulars of the President Obama’s Iran deal (“Joint Plan of Action”), other than to say that many years ago I spent time in Iran, loved the people and came to think that they are the USA’s natural allies in that part of the world’s (just as in my travels I came to believe that Vietnam is our natural ally in continental Asia), but had a beef with the authoritarianism of most of the mullahs I met (a dissatisfaction that I had opportunity to express to them while there). I am a liberal (not in the modern American misuse of the term, but in the correct, Hayekian/Milton Friedman sense of the term), and to me non-liberals generally seem like sociopaths. So while analysis of the terms of JPOA that I might venture would come from that mixed sense of a belief that American engagement with Persia would be good for the world, while standing up for America’s liberal values (and for those countries that broadly share them, such as Israel) is also good for the world, I will leave that for another place and time. Instead, this comment on the JPOA will be based not on its substance, but on the process which gave birth to it: In my experience, when any one person (including myself) believes that one’s greater wisdom, virtue, or intelligence puts one in a position to bypass institutions which have evolved (such as common law) or which have withstood the test of time (such as the US Constitution), it generally works out badly.”